


The Best He Can

by thingyoudowiththatthing



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amara stuff, Canon Divergence, Cheating, F/M, Implied Smut, Multi, Reader Insert, SPN retold through Baby's headlights, Sam/Amelia only as in canon, as in canon, character deaths only as in canon, not really - Freeform, pregnancies, seriously brief, slight - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 16:46:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13439010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingyoudowiththatthing/pseuds/thingyoudowiththatthing
Summary: My love letter to the beauty that is Baby and her owner. It is SPN 1-12 retold with a reader.





	The Best He Can

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the sweet amazing @blacktithe7 on tumblr for betaing this for me
> 
> ***My fics are not to be saved nor posted on any other sites without my express written permission.***

I have been lucky in my time on Earth, even if I have been through more than most. Sal, as flawed as he was, was a good man. He tried to do the best he knew how to with the short time he was given. He wanted to save people even if he couldn’t save himself. So he drove me around, giving Bibles away to people he felt needed some guidance, right up until the day he drank himself to death.

Standing on that lot at Rainbow Motors, I missed him. He had treated me right, and I had no way of knowing if the next guy would. I feared the uncertainty then like I never have since. When he walked up, I knew where I belonged. Even if he wasn’t the guy that took me home, I felt a connection to that man I was not going to understand for years, but I knew I belonged with him.

It wasn’t just the way he talked about me. The way he admired me. He spoke as if he knew me. Like I was important. I was sad to see him go, but John Winchester gave me some good years. He took care of me, and he loved me. So did Mary. They were amazing people, but in all my 10 years with them, the nights I felt the most important were nights I only came to understand later on.

One night after being to a drive in movie, Mary and John didn’t quite make it home. They spend the night in my backseat, and I felt their love as they loved each other. They had done this before of course, but there was something special about that night. I could feel it then, and nine months later, when John was forcing me to go as fast as I could to get to the hospital in time, I knew what it had been.

Two days later, when he didn’t let me go past 40 all the way home, with Mary and their newborn in the back making fun of him, that was the day I knew. Dean Winchester had been born, and I felt the same connection as I had 6 years ago at Rainbow Motors. That little boy had been the same man that had spoken about me with love in his voice. That man was the reason I was going to be important, not just to him, but to the world. With him, I was going to make the difference I had always craved too. For him, I was going to give my everything, and I was going to keep him as safe as I knew how to.

When Sam was born, there was a connection too, but it was different. I felt a darkness lurking and a fear in Mary I hadn’t when Dean had been born. I wanted to protect that boy, and I knew he was going to need it. I knew Dean was going to be there for him, because that was just who he was. He loved his brother with everything he had from the moment he was born. Before then even. He spent hours in my backseat, making up stories of the adventures he and Sam were going to go on when Mary was still pregnant and tired, and John was working extra hours to support his family. Dean was on his own, and he dreamt of a time when he wouldn’t be, a time where he always had someone with him, a brother to lean on and be there for. I have never known anyone that had a heart as big as him, and he was only four years old.

That part of Dean never changed. Not even when his mom died and their house burned down. Not even when John took his sons and me on the road, bouncing from motel to motel. Sometimes I wished I’d had an airbag to shoot into that man’s face for what he was doing to those boys, but I also knew he was doing the best he could.

What appeared to be a search for revenge wasn’t just that to me. When his sons were asleep, John would come outside and sit in my driver seat. He would speak as if Mary was there with him, tell her what new things the boys had learned. He would tell her how book smart Sam was and how he wished life was different for them. That it wasn’t safe to just abandon this life and put Sam through school like he wanted. He spoke of Dean and how proud he was of his oldest son. He was a fast learner, and he thought quicker on his feet that even John sometimes. He spoke to Mary, telling her how Dean was the heart of the family after she left. He would never use the word died. It seemed as if it was too final for him, so he used other words instead.

There was no doubt to me that John Winchester loved his sons and that he was doing what he was doing to keep them safe. He had a nagging feeling that would came into Sam’s nursery that night would keep coming, and that was why he was so hard on Dean. If, one day, he wasn’t there to keep his youngest safe, Dean would have to pick up that responsibility. He would have to not only keep the boys together, but save Sam from the yellow eyes lurking in the dark. If John died, the boys would be all each other had left.

Things didn’t turn out the way John wanted them too though. Sam was a lot more like him than he cared for, headstrong and wanting to go his own way. He wanted more from life that bouncing from motel to motel. He wanted to go to school, and he wanted a family. It wasn’t the fight between Sam and John that hurt me the most though. It was the fight between the brothers. It was Dean being left in the rain, bleeding from his lip, and Sam walking off with an eye that was already swelling. It was the words they left each other with and the feeling that the other didn’t mattered to them anymore that hurt the most. Back then,  I wished he would have jumped inside me and gone after his brother, but he never did. That was the thing about Dean. No matter how much it hurt him, no matter how much he wished things were different, he would let people go. He would let them find their own way even if it was against everything he believed in, even if he would fight them every step of the way. When they made their decision, Dean would respect it.

I watched him that night, sitting on my hood with a beer in his hand, and I knew he wanted to scream and yell at John. I knew that Dean blamed him for driving Sam away. I knew that deep down, even though he idolised the man, he blamed him for a lot of things he would never say out loud. Family was too important to Dean for that. He was too scared of losing what little bit he had left, so he held it in. Right up until he met her. I knew she was special the moment she jumped out in front of me, and Dean practically stood on my breaks to keep me from hitting her.

She had lost everything. Her parents, her sister, and nearly her life. Dean took her to Bobby’s, and he called Sam that night for the first time in almost 2 years. He was more shaken up after Y/N had taken him back to where she had believed her sister to still be alive than I had ever seen him. They had gotten there too late, and there was nothing either of them could do for her. Dean had just stood there and let Y/N take her anger out on him until, exhausted and still crying, she  fell against his chest. He had held the girl as his heart broke for her.

I watched him hold her until she calmed down, and I felt him try and find the right thing to say as he drove her through the night towards South Dakota and Bobby Singer’s place. It was the only thing he could think of to take her. He couldn’t keep her with him since he was joining John on a hunt in a few hours. Hell, he knew he was already late, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to explain himself to his dad. In that moment, all Dean cared about was Y/N’s safety. Dean didn’t know how important that girl was going to be to him then, but somehow, I did. I felt the same connection between him and her that had been between John and Mary before she died. Same, but different.

Y/N came in and out of Dean’s life for the next few years. When John disappeared and Sam rejoined his brother on the road, they became friends, and Sam started bugging his brother why he hadn’t asked her out yet. Had I been able to hug Sam, I would have. I had wanted to kick Dean’s ass more than once for not having the balls to kiss her when they had been on hunts together. I had wanted to honk my horn when I felt his heart ache for her when she walked back up the driveway to Bobby’s place. I felt her longing when she turned back and waved too.

Dean and Y/N belonged together. Everyone but themselves were able to see that, and it had taken a sacrifice greater than anything they could have imagined for them to finally admit it. When she thought she had lost Dean, she ran off only to return when she heard of his salvation. Everyone could see how happy they were to be together again, but even then they denied it, it had taken losing the one thing they always depended on for them to admit to their feelings.

Dean made Sam a promise before he jumped into the pit. Y/N arrived a moment too late, and she fell around his neck just seconds after Castiel had healed him. I don’t know if it was his pain or my own I felt that day, but it was the most profound pain I had ever felt. Sam Winchester was gone. Dean was alone for the first time in his life, but he also wasn’t. That was the night he had given into her. He had taken comfort in her, and her in him. It was more than just comfort though. They had allowed each other to finally feel the love that had been between them for years. They had allowed themselves to try and find happiness in the midst of all the pain. They had agreed to try and keep the promise Sam had made them both make. They were leaving the life, but they were never going to stop trying to save Sam from Lucifer and the cage. They were going to live normal lives, but Sam was not going to stay in damnation. They vowed they would free their brother, by blood and by choice, no matter what it took.

They had tried. The had failed, but each night I saw them through the window. I saw them sitting on the floor going through everything. In the light of day, they were a normal happy couple, but during the night, their grief and loss consumed them. Y/N hadn’t been able to save her sister, and sitting in my passenger seat one night, Dean’s grief had been too much from her. She had confessed to me that she needed to save Sam. She understood the Winchester brothers in a way I don’t think anyone before her had. She understood they were bound, and the bond was unbreakable. No matter what choices the other would make, no matter how many times they fought or disagreed, they were connected. It wasn’t just Dean who wanted to keep his brother safe, it was Sam wanting to make his brother proud. They had been each other’s safety and only normalcy for so long, and the love between them was too strong to ever savor. She felt privileged that they had let her in. She loved Dean more than anything, and she knew the feeling was returned. It wasn’t a competition though. Dean needed Sam, but that didn’t mean he needed her less. Y/N wanted Dean to have it all, and I loved her for it. I knew that she was going to be his true happiness, and she was going to keep him sane through whatever laid ahead. Just like I knew Sam wasn’t Sam when he found his way back to them. Dean knew it too, and when no one seemed to believe Dean completely, she did. She said what I wanted to say to him, and I was happy he got to hear it.

“I love you, Dean. More than that, I trust you, and no one knows Sam better than you do. If you tell me that man is not Sam or is not completely Sam, I trust you, and we will figure it out. We will get Sam back.”

They had gotten Sam back, even if Y/N had nearly killed Dean when she found out how he had gone about it. She, unlike Dean, didn’t feel Sam’s life was worth more than his. She had screamed at him for hours that night and had only stopped when Sam had woken up. She had left the brothers alone to hide with me, but Dean had followed her. He apologized to her, and he had shown her he meant it. They laid together on my backseat that night, and she clung to him as she told him she couldn’t lose him. Losing Sam had hurt, but losing Dean would break her. Dean had promised her he would always find his way back to her no matter what happened. He told her he always had, and he had kissed her, telling her he loved her for the first time. I knew he had felt it for years, but words didn’t come easy to Dean. She knew that too, so she had never pushed him. Still, she had cried when he said it, and she had let him roll her beneath him again as she repeated the words back to him. They had spend the entire night awake, proving to each other just how true those words were.

Of course they had no idea how bad they were going to need to hold on to those words, or how the world was just about to go to Hell. Losing Castiel was hard on Dean and started him on his downward spiral. Him leaving me behind when I knew he was breaking hurt. I understood, but I hated it as much as he did. Y/N kept coming around through. Dean didn’t. I think he felt it was part of a past he would never regain, but Y/N came. She talked to me. She told me about Sam losing it. About Dean drinking more and more. About how her and Dean fought, and how it had gotten worse after they lost Bobby. He had been like a dad to all of them. He was the only family Y/N had known for a long time, and it hurt that Dean wouldn’t let her in. He always had in the past, but now she felt as if he was pushing her away. She walked away with the promise that she wouldn’t let him. She loved him more than anything, and she knew he needed her more than ever. She was going to stand by him whether he liked it or not.

I have never been more proud of them than I was the day they came to collect me. Everything seemed a bit off, but Dean was smiling. Not just smiling, he was happier than I have seen him in a long time. Castiel didn’t seem like himself, but he was alive. He was alive, and he stood in the middle of the field that starry night with Y/N and Dean on either side of him. Sam stood behind Dean, holding the rings as I watched from the road. Cars don’t cry, but if they did, I would have that day. I would have when I saw Dean vow to always find his way back to her and always love her. When Y/N promised him she would never stop fighting for him and with him and that she would love him even when he was a dick. I would have cried when Castiel scolded Y/N for her chose of words, and Sam laughed. I would surely have cried when Y/N pushed the ring on Dean’s finger, and Dean pushed another on Y/N’s. I don’t think in my over 40 years of time on this Earth I have ever seen anything more beautiful than that kiss.

For a brief moment, their happiness outshone the pain and the chaos of the world. For a moment, they felt as if they were enough. But then Dean disappeared along with Castiel. Sam was still broken. You can’t blame him from running away from it all. I didn’t. I was mad at him sure, but I never truly blamed him. Dean was all he was ever certain of, and just like the last time he had lost him, he broke. Only this time there was no Ruby and no demon blood. There was noone to turn to. So Sam did what he had always done when things got too much. He and Y/N rebuilt me after the damage Meg had caused running me through a sign to offer up a distraction. When I was mended, Sam took my keys, and he ran.

Y/N was angry at first, but she forgave him. She came to visit him and Amelia, but she never stayed long, even if Sam pleaded with her not to go back out there. Y/N couldn’t stay though. Without Dean, she didn’t have a home. Without Dean, there was no place she could stay for too long before the pain of him not being there with her became too much.

She always visited with me for a few hours before she upped and left though. She always talked to me, reminisced about little moments she had shared with Dean. Most of them I had been around for, and had car’s been able to cry I would have cried with her then too.

Her pain was as profound as Dean’s had been when he had lost Sam, or as profound as her own when she had first appeared before me, just after her family had died. Y/N Winchester loved Dean with all of her heart, and no matter how long she would have to search, she would never give up on her husband. I only wished she would take me with her when she left, but she knew Sam needed me. I was all he had left of his brother. She had the ring Dean had put on her finger, and that was enough to keep her going for now.

Y/N hadn’t found Dean. He had found his way back to her just like he had promised he would. He had found Sam first. I didn’t witness it, but I knew they had fought because Dean stormed out of there like a bat out of Hell. He pushed me to drive faster than I had in a long time, but it was okay. I was going to keep him safe. He was back behind my wheel where he belong, and I knew without a doubt where we were going. He found her too, out in the middle of nowhere, and she had pushed all his tests out of his hands and thrown her arms around his neck.

“I don’t need those. I’d know you anywhere Winchester,” she sobbed, and that was the first time in the two days hed had been back that I had seen Dean smile. When he carried her to my backseat, I felt there love. I had missed them, but I felt something else. I felt a connection I hadn’t felt in 35 years. I knew what they didn’t yet know themselves, and the knowledge saddened and joyed me at the same time. So I pushed it away and listened to Dean’s words as they laid together, taking comfort in the feel of each other’s heartbeat and warmth. I listened to Dean tell Y/N what he hadn’t been able to tell Sam. He told her of a year spent running and fighting. He told her of a vampire called Benny and how he hadn’t been able to save Castiel. I listened to her comfort him and tell him he did the best he could, and I thought about how I had thought the same about John so many years ago.

John had done the best he could for his sons, and I truly hoped Dean’s best would be better. Repeating just one of John’s mistakes with the unborn child neither of them knew Y/N was expecting would break him. Dean deserved to find happiness, even in as dark a life as the one I knew he was destined to continue.

I felt his fears a few months later when she told him, sitting in the front seat holding his hands. She apologized, telling him she had made a mistake. There had been noone for over year, and she had been so obsessed with finding him that she hadn’t thought to take her pills. She had been so happy, and she had needed him.

I felt her fears too. Not only fears for what it would mean to raise a child in this world like Dean, she was scared that he would leave her, that he would think the kid would be better off without him around when she knew nothing could be further from the truth. I was happy when Dean proved her fears wrong. I still shared their fears for the kid’s future. Dean made every fear pale when wrapped Y/N in his arms, telling her they would figure this out and a smile slide across his face asking her if he was really going to be a dad, I allowed myself to stop worrying and be happy with them. Y/N and Dean’s laughter filled the car. I know their fears would return, but in that moment, they were just a young couple in love and expecting their first child. In that moment, they were normal and in love.

The Bunker was a blessing at the right time. Dean had a lot on his mind with Sam and the trails. He knew Sam was still feeling guilty for his choices to leave this life without looking for Dean. The trails were a way for him to rectify that along with every other mistake he had made in his life. I hated that Sam felt he had to do this, and so did Dean. He just didn’t have the words to let his brother know that he was still his brother. There was nothing in this world more important to him tham Sam, Y/N, and his unborn son.

The Bunker took a huge weight off of Dean’s shoulders. It was a place he knew Y/N and his son would be safe from the things he hunted. No matter if they did closed the gates of Hell or not, I knew Dean still worried for every other monster in the world wanting payback. His son was a target from the moment he was conceived. Y/N and Dean would never leave this life. They both knew that. They were both determined to give their son the best life they could with the hand they were dealt, and somehow I grew more and more confident that Dean would be a better father than most, even with the dangers lurking in the dark. He would always be there for his family, and to him, nothing would come before either of them. No hunt, no revenge, no anything would come before the safety of his son, wife, and brother.

Seeing Dean with his son for the first time is a sight I will never forget. He held him like he was afraid the smallest thing was going to crush him. He held him as if he was shielding him from the world, because he probably was.

What happened not to long after was one desperate decision, let by another. I watched Dean talk to that angel, and even if I did have a bad feeling about him, even if I could have warned Dean, I am not sure I would have. I needed Sam to make it as much as he did. I have given those boys a home ever since they were born. Even if my connection to Dean is stronger, I do not love Sam any less. I didn’t wanna see him die. So Dean had let an angel into Sam without his brother’s knowledge. Without Castiel’s knowledge. Without Y/N’s knowledge.

Y/N and Sam both felt betrayed by Dean, and he left with me. I wanted to scream at him to go back to his brother, wife, and son, but I couldn’t. So I did what I always had. I gave him a home when he needed it, even after I felt him starting to change. There was something dark inside him, and it stayed even after Sam and Dean started working together again. Even after Y/N forgave him. Hell, she did more than that. She apologized for not listening and not going after him. She told him she needed him. I know he felt it, but something inside him prevented him from letting her in completely. He told her about the Mark, but he didn’t tell her about how he felt. Dean knew as well as I did, that it was doing something to him. I am not sure why he didn’t speak up. Maybe it was because he knew he had made a wrong decision. Maybe it was because he wanted to keep his family safe,or maybe it was because he still didn’t feel he deserved happiness. Dean has always carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, and I am not always sure he does it out of kindness and love. Well, he does that too, but Dean truly believes that he doesn’t deserve what others do. I know that even when he got married he felt bad for his happiness, because it was his and not Sam’s. Dean has always wanted the best for everyone else around him and never felt as if he deserved the same himself. The Mark on his arm enhanced the feeling of not being worth anything, and I hated it. I knew it was going to take him down a long dark path, but even I didn’t foresee what came next.  

I hated when he got in my driver’s seat. He looked like Dean. Some small part of him still was I guess. He had his every memory but none of the emotions to go with them. He didn’t care about Sam, Y/N, or even his son. All he cared about was the one thing Dean never wanted; to be free. I watched him hurt people. I watched him with other women. I felt how he stopped caring about me. It hurt. All of it hurt. He looked like the man that I had devoted my time on Earth too, but he wasn’t him and I prayed his brother, his best friend, and his wife would see that. I prayed that they would save him, and they did. They did and all of the guilt returned. The guilt of what he had done. The guilt of not being faithful. The guilt of almost killing his brother, but they forgave him. I am not sure Dean ever truly forgave himself though.

I am not sure anyone could have withstood the powers of the Mark for almost a year like Dean did, but he he didn’t do it alone. The love of his family was what kept him going. The love of his brother, his friends, Y/N, and his son was what made him keep fighting. He wanted to be there for them. He wanted to be the man he had promised her he would always be. When he felt that slipping, and when he lost a girl he had considered a sister, when Y/N took their son to Jody to keep him safe from Dean, that is when he almost broke. It was the blind faith on Sam’s face. It was her voice calling out to him from across the room. It was the pictures of his childhood with Sam. It was the first picture of Owen in Y/N’s arms with Dean smiling proudly besides her that saved not only Sam’s life, but Dean’s own. I didn’t see any of this, but Y/N told me everything later, just like she always did. I know she doesn’t understand that I actually hear her, but I am her comfort like she is mine. We are both Dean’s protectors. We will both do anything to keep him safe, and that is why none of us were relieved for long when the Mark left his arm.

Even if it was no longer visible, and it no longer had the same effects on him, the Darkness had left something behind. Strings she used to control him. Dean fought against them, and he hated the pull Amara had on him. He felt as if he was betraying his brother and his wife, even if Sam and Y/N never saw it that way. They stayed by his side. Their love was his guiding light, and he made it through. Never had I felt like crying as much as I did the night he said goodbye to Y/N. The night he reminded her how much he loved her in my backseat.

It wasn’t just their love that touched me. It wasn’t just the feeling of the powers hidden within his chest, powers that I knew would end his life soon. It was the connection I felt. Soon another life would join Y/N and Owen, and Dean would never know. A little boy or girl would grow up without ever knowing its father. Sure he would hear stories, but no story could ever do Dean Winchester justice. He was the kind of strong, brave, kind and loving you would only believe to exist if you met him.

I have never been more proud of him or more relieved than I was in the moment he returned home to me. Y/N’s hand was still in his, and Owen was on his arm as they stood by my side. She clung to him like she never wanted to let him go again. Her love and relief mixed with mine as well as her confusion. Mary Winchester was with them.

Y/N instantly loved her, because Dean did, but I worried. I worried as I went with her and Cas to pick up Sam after Dean had dropped Y/N and Owen off at Donna’s. Dean kissed Y/N goodbye and vowed he would return to them soon. I knew it wasn’t a lie. Dean was more himself now that he had been in years. He knew what was important to him again. Family. But most of all, he felt a part of it again. He now saw that he was as important to them as they were to him, and he was going to save his brother. He was going to reunite his family, and they were going to get through whatever laid ahead the together.

I was worried though. I knew the Mary Dean remembered was not the person she really was. Mary was always as headstrong as Dean. Hunting is as much in her blood as it is in his, but just like Sam, she spent her too short life trying to deny it. Sam learned from his mistakes, but I am not sure Mary ever did. Her being back in my boys’ life was going to mean heartbreak. I knew that. The image Dean had held onto was going to shatter, and I was afraid I was afraid he was going to shatter with it.

The image did shatter. Dean did doubt himself, but he held onto the things he had always been sure of. Sam, Y/N, and the family they now knew was growing. Still, Mary’s as well as Lucifer’s return brought something else with it I was sure was in the past. Something that had haunted Dean and Sam all their lives, until Dean had finally ended its life. Something I never thought I should see again, but I did. The night Dean rushed Y/N into the hospital to give birth to their second son. Sam was trailing behind them with 4 year old Owen on his arm.

I saw them in the dark, and never in my time on Earth have I wanted to warn Dean as much as I did it that moment, but I am only a car. I can’t tell them anything. Instead, here I am remembering everything I have seen and heard, praying that history won’t repeat itself. Praying that all the pain and hurt in Sam and Dean’s lives is not about to be passed onto the next generation of Winchester boys. Praying that Y/N will be as strong and smart as I believe her to be. Praying that she will never start a chain reaction like Mary did. I can’t know, but I got a feeling that no matter what she does her boys, just like their dad and uncle, will never leave this life.

I can’t know, but the pair of yellow eyes staring down the hospital makes me believe Owen’s path is already set in motion. I only hope he will grow up to be the man his dad is and always has been. I only hope the Winchester’s will always have each other, and that the world will always have them to keep it safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave feedback. It keeps me going.


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